SOME SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVES by WILLIAM DOUGLAS and JAMES R. SCROGGS *

Conversion has probably received more attention from psychologists of religion than any other topic, with the possible exception of mysticism. Since the turn of the twentieth century there have been at least five hundred publications dealing with the psychological dynamics of religious conversion. In sociology and anthropology, the situation was somewhat different. In anthropology, until recent years, the focus was on primitive cultures, where conversion in the strict sense was virtually unknown. The founders of modern sociology, theoretical giants such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, gave little attention to conversion. And, when James died in 1910, Durkheim in 1917, and Weber in 1920, with posthumous publication of much of Weber’s most important work in sociology of religion, there was, in a sense, the end of an era. Between World Wars I and 11, there were few further developments, and as James’ theoretical formulations remained normative in psychology of religion, so did Weber’s in sociology of religion.

Major sociological emphases

Illustrative of the recent renewal of interest in the study of religion on the part of sociologists is Charles Y . Glock and Rodney Stark, Religion and Society in Tension. Glock and Stark, of the Survey Research Center of the University of California, Berkeley, criticize psychological explanations of religious experience, andXdeny that “religious experience is problematic and primarily an individually motivated act in our society.” Rather they believe that :

“Some social situations are structured to produce religious experience among participants. . . By ignoring the complex social character of modern societies, psychologists apply a rhetoric of abnormality to religious experience prematurely, that is, without first distinguishing persons for whom such behavior could be considered ‘unusual’ from those for whom

* Rev. Dr. WILLIAM DOUGLAS is Associate Professor of Psychology of Religion at Boston University School of Theology, USA.

* Rev. Dr. JAMES R. SCROGGS is Minister of the Second Congregation a1 Church, Winchester, Mass., USA.

The following are excerpts from a paper prepared for the National Faith and Order Collo- quim, Chicago, 1966. The Journal of Religion and Health is publishing a fuller paper on this subject by the same authors in July of this year. Rand McNally, 1965.

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such behavior must be classed as ‘normal’ (i.e. norm-governed). . . [For example ,] certain of the conservative and fundamentalist denominations and sects in America have well-organized and institutionalized mechanisms for generating and channeling religious experiences, particularly of the salvational variety. . . where persons. . . are subjected to great pressure and inducement to conform to these normative expectations and con- summate an encounter with a divine agency. [For,] only in relation to a man’s context can we know whether his behavior classifies him as the most docile conformist or as a strange deviant.” (pp. 152-3.)

In this connection Glock and Stark suggest five “general theological camps.. . among the American denominations” (p. 120). These they consider to be the liberals (Congregationalists, Methodists and Episco- palians) ; the moderates (Disciples of Christ and Presbyterians), the conservatives (American Lutherans and American Baptists), the funda- mentalists (Missouri Synod Lutherans, Southern Baptists, and many small sets), and Roman Catholics, who “on most theological issues. . . consistently resemble the conservatives .” Sociology of religion appears to be beginning to move beyond the inadequate typology of Protestant-Catholic- Jew, or the classic Troeltsch typology with regard to Protestantism of sect and church. (In the more typical modern version the typology becomes : cult, sect, denomination, and ecclesia.) I t is in the sect context, or more properly the change from denomination or ecclesia to sect or cult, that sociologists have most frequently studied religious conversion. But in some recent publications, like Glenn Vernon’s Sociology of Religion, there is a more inclusive attention to varieties of changed group membership of individuals, in what he calls changed religious self-identification. Vernon, like other sociologists, uses the word “acculturation” in prefer- ence to conversion to refer to a process in which one established behavior pattern is replaced by another, and there are unlearnings as well as learnings. He stresses (pp. 108-110) that :

“to change one’s religious allegiance; . . involves changing.. . deep- seated attitudes and convictions. . . Norms once accepted without question take on a tabu which requires their rejection.. . The acceptance of new religious beliefs is generally easier if one’s significant others [family and friends] are also in the process of change or have already changed.. . If the change is carried through, gently or ruthlessly, the old group will reject the individual and close its ranks behind him as those of his new group open before him.”

McGraw-Hill, 1962.

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Such a change in religious self-identification can take place at a group, as well as individual, level, often at the initiation of a group leader. And there are instances of the conversion of one group by another, usually by the authority of rulers or by brute force, as in the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism, the Persians to Islam, or the Spanish Jews to Roman Catholicism. In general, sociologists link religious change to socio-economic-cultural change, rather than individual decision, however. An excellent example of a functionalist approach to ideological change is C. K. Yang’s Religion in Chinese Society, * particularly his discussion of “Communism as a New Faith” (pp. 378 ff.) :

“The collapse of the traditional sociopolitical order, together with its theistic symbols and guiding doctrine.. . was only part of an ongoing process of social transformation marked by the accelerating disintegra- tion of the traditional order of life.. . With the wide range of unstable and contradictory popular movements vying for his attention, the educated individual became bewildered and desperate, as he could neither drift with the current nor retreat to the discredited and disorganized traditional pattern of life. His life and the world around him no longer had a consistent system of meanings for him.. . As the gods, the symbols of old faiths, declined, Chinese society searched hard for a new faith which would be in harmony with the spirit of materialistic rationalism and the ‘power to move for action.’ . . . Now another nontheistic faith, Communism, has emerged to replace [Sun Yat Sen’s] ideology as the answer to the long search .”

Conversion, therefore, as the sociologists and anthropologists point out, can take place at a social and cultural level as well as individual level, particularly when religion is defined as Glock and Stark do (pp. 4 ff.) :

“an institutionalized system of symbols, beliefs, values, and practices focused on questions of ultimate meaning. . . It is in relation to these kinds of perspectives that we observe the phenomenon of conversion, which may well be defined as the process by which a person comes to adopt an all-pervading world view or changes from one such perspective to another. . . the convert . has experienced a drastic shift in the orientation of his valuation of reality. . .”

University of California Press, 1961.